Sulfide

After receiving more than 330 complaints about a foul odor wafting across Santa Fe Springs last week, air quality officials said Monday they had pinpointed the smell to increases in the amount of hydrogen sulfide in the air. "Hydrogen sulfide does give you that rotten-egg type smell," said Sam Atwood of the South Coast Air Quality Management District. Atwood said field inspectors tracked the odor to a wastewater storage tank on the property of...

Some mysterious underwater circles spotted in the Baltic Sea have been explained, and poison is to blame. But let's back up and start from the beginning. In 2008, a tourist to the island of Mon in Denmark noticed strange patterns in the shallow waters beneath the island's striking white chalk cliffs. As you can see in the image above, the patterns looked like circles, and they were rather large. Some of them were as much as 50 feet in diameter. Speculations were far ranging: Were the circles remnants of bomb craters from World War II?

An abandoned copper mine is polluting nearby water supplies with copper sulfide and other toxic compounds that are threatening vacationers and aquatic life in the Spenceville Wildlife and Recreation Area about 50 miles north of Sacramento, Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board officials said. The Spenceville Mine was first mined in the late 1860s and remained in production until 1918. Steve Bond, a control board geologist, said vacationers often camp in areas polluted by hazardous tailings from the mine.

After receiving more than 330 complaints about a foul odor wafting across Santa Fe Springs last week, air quality officials said Monday they had pinpointed the smell to increases in the amount of hydrogen sulfide in the air. "Hydrogen sulfide does give you that rotten-egg type smell," said Sam Atwood of the South Coast Air Quality Management District. Atwood said field inspectors tracked the odor to a wastewater storage tank on the property of...

Criminal complaints were filed Thursday against two Orange County companies for allegedly polluting state waters and killing aquatic life, Deputy Dist. Atty. Diane Stavenhagen Kadletz said. The complaints were filed against J.A. Jones Construction Co. of Orange for allegedly killing 3,000 pounds of live squid by pumping hydrogen sulfide-contaminated water into Newport Bay in late January; and against Aerochem Inc.

Some mysterious underwater circles spotted in the Baltic Sea have been explained, and poison is to blame. But let's back up and start from the beginning. In 2008, a tourist to the island of Mon in Denmark noticed strange patterns in the shallow waters beneath the island's striking white chalk cliffs. As you can see in the image above, the patterns looked like circles, and they were rather large. Some of them were as much as 50 feet in diameter. Speculations were far ranging: Were the circles remnants of bomb craters from World War II?

Re "Playa Vista School Plan Is Up in the Air," May 30: The problems at the Playa Vista site are not just methane or toxics from the former Howard Hughes plant site. There are also problems with hydrogen sulfide, a toxic oilfield gas that can cause permanent brain damage. High amounts of H2S at the Playa Vista site were documented in the Playa Vista archeology reports, as well as in L.A. city records that showed workers getting sick from H2S on the site. Because building on this wetland requires thousands of pilings--which act as conduits to bring the underground gases up to the surface--it increases the risk of students and residents being exposed to these toxins.

The protest against architect Frank O. Gehry's involvement in the Playa Vista development turned personal Wednesday when a longtime friend chained herself to the door of his Santa Monica design studio and was arrested. Valerie Sklarevsky, 56, was booked on suspicion of trespassing and resisting arrest after police snipped bicycle-lock cables connecting her to the main entrance at the Cloverfield Boulevard office. "Go home.

A 2,500-gallon oil storage tank caught fire Saturday in the mountains just south of Santa Paula, sending black smoke wafting over the town's citrus orchards. Officials said the storage tank owned by Ojai Oil Co. on a field on South Mountain erupted into flames shortly after 10:30 a.m. and threatened another tank as well as the surrounding brush before fire crews snuffed out the fire about 11:15 a.m. No injuries were reported and investigators are continuing to search for a cause.

As family and friends mourned the deaths of two farm workers, investigators determined Thursday that the tragedy at Sespe Ranch just outside the city was an industrial accident, not the result of foul play. Exactly how Oxnard residents Miguel Lopez, 43, and Palemon Rangel Yanez, 44, died is still a mystery to authorities, who are continuing to search for clues. The men's bodies were found Wednesday afternoon floating in a tank of fertilizer they had been told to clean.

When belched out of cars and factories at high levels, the noxious gasses nitric oxide, carbon monoxide and hydrogen sulfide are deadly poisons. But scientists are finding that, in miniscule doses, those same gases can serve as medicines. "There's been an explosion of work in the last decade looking at these molecules in terms of therapeutics," says Dr. Mark Gladwin, a lung specialist and researcher at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. These unwholesome components of smog, automobile emissions and industrial exhaust also happen to be essential chemicals in the body, where they exist in minute amounts.

Hoping a public outing will force Chinese drywall manufacturers to take responsibility for their products, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has published a list of brands that emit the most sulfuric gas compounds. For more than a year, the agency has been investigating problems with drywall imported from China. Hydrogen sulfide released from some brands of Chinese-made wallboard is the cause of corrosion in appliances, air conditioning coils and other metals, triggering about 3,300 complaints to the federal government.

Thirty-nine workers were evacuated by the U.S. Coast Guard from a large oil platform 10 miles off the Ventura County coast Thursday morning after concentrations of flammable natural gas and toxic hydrogen sulfide began to leak from a wellhead, triggering safety alarms, authorities said. Fifteen workers remained on Platform Gail to contain the leaking gas with a shower of water and then plug the oil well, according to the Coast Guard.

Re "Playa Vista School Plan Is Up in the Air," May 30: The problems at the Playa Vista site are not just methane or toxics from the former Howard Hughes plant site. There are also problems with hydrogen sulfide, a toxic oilfield gas that can cause permanent brain damage. High amounts of H2S at the Playa Vista site were documented in the Playa Vista archeology reports, as well as in L.A. city records that showed workers getting sick from H2S on the site. Because building on this wetland requires thousands of pilings--which act as conduits to bring the underground gases up to the surface--it increases the risk of students and residents being exposed to these toxins.

The Balboa Bay Club has been fined $60,000 by state water regulators for 20 violations of discharging sulfide into bay waters from February 2001 to January 2002. Sulfide--a naturally occurring, odiferous ground water compound--was released during construction work for a new resort at the club.

The protest against architect Frank O. Gehry's involvement in the Playa Vista development turned personal Wednesday when a longtime friend chained herself to the door of his Santa Monica design studio and was arrested. Valerie Sklarevsky, 56, was booked on suspicion of trespassing and resisting arrest after police snipped bicycle-lock cables connecting her to the main entrance at the Cloverfield Boulevard office. "Go home.

For some dental professionals, it's little more than a marketing ploy. For a specialist in Philadelphia, it's a rip-off of his earlier work. But for 75-year-old Frances Brower, it was an answer to her prayer to be rescued from the bad breath that has haunted her since early adolescence. "Recently I said to the Lord, 'Dear God, this has been going on since I was 11 years old," said Brower, who was moved to prayer by a 6-year-old granddaughter's complaint about Grandma's halitosis.

The Balboa Bay Club has been fined $60,000 by state water regulators for 20 violations of discharging sulfide into bay waters from February 2001 to January 2002. Sulfide--a naturally occurring, odiferous ground water compound--was released during construction work for a new resort at the club.

November 15, 1999 | KAYE H. KILBURN, Kaye H. Kilburn MD, a professor of medicine at USC, is author of "Chemical Brain Injury" (John Wiley and Sons, 1998) and many scientific papers dealing with the toxic effects of chemicals. He testified before the LAUSD school board and the commission on the Belmont Learning Complex

Like most important decisions, what to do with the Belmont Learning Complex is neither unanimous nor clear. Impassioned feelings about educational opportunity and race have swayed many people to ignore danger. The independent commission appointed by the Los Angeles Unified School District board seemed unable to focus on safety or give more credence to assurances that a way could be found to engineer a safe level of contaminating gases.

A 2,500-gallon oil storage tank caught fire Saturday in the mountains just south of Santa Paula, sending black smoke wafting over the town's citrus orchards. Officials said the storage tank owned by Ojai Oil Co. on a field on South Mountain erupted into flames shortly after 10:30 a.m. and threatened another tank as well as the surrounding brush before fire crews snuffed out the fire about 11:15 a.m. No injuries were reported and investigators are continuing to search for a cause.